Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

6. CHAPTER VI (continued)

So they walked on down the Tottenham Court Road, parting and coming together again, and Ralph felt much as though he were addressing the summit of a poplar in a high gale of wind.

"Suppose we get on to that omnibus?" he suggested.

Katharine acquiesced, and they climbed up, and found themselves alone on top of it.

"But which way are you going?" Katharine asked, waking a little from the trance into which movement among moving things had thrown her.

"I'm going to the Temple," Ralph replied, inventing a destination on the spur of the moment. He felt the change come over her as they sat down and the omnibus began to move forward. He imagined her contemplating the avenue in front of them with those honest sad eyes which seemed to set him at such a distance from them. But the breeze was blowing in their faces; it lifted her hat for a second, and she drew out a pin and stuck it in again,--a little action which seemed, for some reason, to make her rather more fallible. Ah, if only her hat would blow off, and leave her altogether disheveled, accepting it from his hands!

"This is like Venice," she observed, raising her hand. "The motor-cars, I mean, shooting about so quickly, with their lights."

"I've never seen Venice," he replied. "I keep that and some other things for my old age."

"What are the other things?" she asked.

"There's Venice and India and, I think, Dante, too."

She laughed.

"Think of providing for one's old age! And would you refuse to see Venice if you had the chance?"

Instead of answering her, he wondered whether he should tell her something that was quite true about himself; and as he wondered, he told her.